


Collateral

by wacomintuos



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Corvo Attano, POV Outsider, in which he didn't save Emily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7183637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wacomintuos/pseuds/wacomintuos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo Attano is a failure. He could have had it all and he threw it all away. The Outsider reflects on Corvo's wasted revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from my in-character rant at leviathan-of-the-whales.tumblr.com

Corvo Attano is an unfortunate example of collateral damage. Almost every problem he experiences now is his own fault, a result of his own carelessness and his own brashness. I fear that he has become desensitised to the world around him, ever since he let poor Lady Emily fall to a rather unfortunate fate.  
He tells himself that he was immobilised by the sight of his daughter in the hands of a fiend like Farley Havelock, that his body pulled free of earthly control, but deep down he and I know different. No matter what he says, it is clear that he stopped himself from caring a long time ago.  
Nobody wants to be associated with him anymore. He is a monster, a ghost, a man of the rats, a masked felon, a w i t c h. Everyone in Dunwall knows who he is and what he’s done, who he has killed. Not even poor Granny Rags can bear to be in the same space as him, and people once called Granny the craziest old bat the city had ever seen. They now remark that they were wrong.  
Dear Corvo is alone now, languishing away in a cold, dark street of the outskirts of Dunwall where there is nothing but plague for company, picking in amongst the rubble of a broken city for whatever scraps of rotten food he can dig out to survive.  
Not once does he question the notion of this “survival”. Is his life that of a survivor’s? Corvo is a sick man, in mind and in health. I doubt he has long left. I did warn him that the rats would turn on him eventually. He would not listen.  
Every tie he has had, he has broken. Not even the one man he could call a friend, the boatman, can stand to speak with him anymore. Corvo has nothing. And me? Well.  
That heart, that heart is all he has. Trying to discern a higher meaning from it, he named it Jessamine, whispering the name of a dead empress in the dead of the night to soothe himself, to try to help him sleep, but he is wrong.  
Perhaps it sounds like her, but it is not. Jessamine Kaldwin lies in the ground where not even the Masked Felon can find her, and perhaps that is for the best.  
Corvo awaits death, but he will not find his lover or his daughter. There is something set out for him, something that not even he will be able to predict.  
After all, there is a special place in hell for filicidal heretics.


End file.
